


the power of pine-sol, baby

by wildcard_47



Category: Mad Men
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-15
Updated: 2014-12-15
Packaged: 2018-03-01 14:51:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2777165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildcard_47/pseuds/wildcard_47
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It had started with a chance remark, the year Mrs. Harris had first come on board as a partner (god: had it really been five years of working in the same house?) Their rivalry had continued on so long now it was practically tradition. He had to taunt her else she would take herself too seriously.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>In which Lane and Joan are working on opposite sides of the Draper household, hate each other to pieces, and--well, maybe they don't hate each other quite as much as they thought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the power of pine-sol, baby

1.

“Daddy, I’m thirteen years old!” screamed Mr. Draper’s eldest daughter from somewhere upstairs. “I don’t need a babysitter!”

Downstairs in the kitchen, in the midst of giving the oven a thorough scrubbing, Lane put one shoulder to his ear with a wince. Miss Sally’s marks in English this term were nothing short of abysmal. She and her father had been feuding over it for months, and apparently Mr. Draper had finally reached his limit.

“Sally, she’s not a babysitter, she’s a tutor—” snapped her father. This was followed by the sound of footsteps pounding down the upstairs hall. “Sally! Come back here!”

“For god’s sake,” hissed a voice much closer to Lane’s ear, and he jerked to attention at the familiar _click-clack_ of high-heeled shoes against the tile. “Can’t he get that spoiled brat under control?”

“Well, he tried sending you to obedience school,” Lane retorted. He peeled off one of his rubber gloves with a snap, got to his feet, and turned to face his opponent. “But you wouldn’t play nice with the other breeds.”

Mrs. Harris fixed him with an unamused look, tucking a stray piece of her perfectly coiffed red hair behind her ear. She was wearing a black suit today, he noticed. It made her look washed out.

“Oh, Lane,” she purred, in a low voice that he despised just on principle. “Why so grumpy today? Did Mrs. Butterworth stand you up for your breakfast date?”

He hated her snide laugh, and her smirk, and the smug way she carried herself. But he was not going to let it bother him today.

“Didn’t you hear?” he answered, all innocence. “Mr. Draper has a new ladyfriend. She’s going to spend time with the children, and live in the spare room, and attend to his _every personal need_.”

“You’re lying,” Mrs. Harris growled. “He’s a workaholic.”

He lifted his hands in a shrug, noticing the way she stepped back to avoid getting stray drops of oven cleaner on the toes of her shoes. Damn.

“Why not ask him, if you don’t believe me?”

2.

One look at Peggy Olson had Lane convinced there had been a few wires crossed during the hiring process. She was attractive, he supposed, but not a head-turner—not at all like the usual girls Mr. Draper had favored as nannies and babysitters in past years. She was a graduate student, she told him with a shrug as they took tea in the kitchen together, and was working part-time as she finished her doctoral degree. A tutoring job in the evenings was convenient for her schedule; it would pay more than enough to supplement her assistantship. And she was only renting the spare room because her current apartment was in the process of being fumigated.

Before returning to school, she had worked as a freelance copywriter for some no-name shop in Brooklyn, run by a man who had been fired from his Manhattan office after having one too many drinks during a high-stakes business lunch.

As soon as she had mentioned copywriting _,_ Lane had understood. Don loved his advertising work more than he had ever loved anyone—even his wives. Any woman who was able to share that passion would have caught his attention immediately.

 

Naturally, Mrs. Harris hated the girl. Lane had caught them in the middle of an argument during Miss Olson’s second week: something about Peggy being _too familiar_ with Mr. Draper. They’d moved too far away from the intercom before he could overhear the rest.

“What is wrong with her?” Miss Olson had hissed, after a particularly vicious encounter in the fourth month. “Is she in love with him, or something?”

He’d laughed for so long he choked on his water.

Mrs. Harris, in love with Don? Oh, Christ, it was absurd. She couldn’t be. She was his business partner, for god’s sake. Mr. Draper had never once glanced at her with any kind of romantic feeling, and she had never shown any interest in him other than the shallow and immaterial. She had plenty of gentleman callers to entertain her in her off hours, at any rate.

“I imagine,” he said, after a long moment of consideration, “she enjoys having his undivided attention.”

Miss Olson seemed to take that as a challenge.

She crashed the next company party in a black and pink dress so revealing it could be classified as an undergarment in many states. When Lane saw both the horrified look on Joan’s face and the slack-jawed want on Don’s, he knew that Miss Olson would be sticking around for the time being. He poured himself a celebratory glass of champagne in the kitchen, indulging in this victory for a moment before he was called back to the dining room to clear plates from the hors d’oeurve tables.

3.

The shout came from the living room.

“Lane, you absolute _ass!_ ”

His ears perked up at hearing profanity escape Mrs. Harris’s lips. This told him two things: one, that Mr. Draper and the children weren’t home, or she’d have spoken with more care, and two: that he had absolutely infuriated her.

“You rang?” he replied smoothly, stepping out into the front foyer.

He was greeted by a furious redhead in a turquoise dress, holding a single message slip between her finger and thumb while advancing on him as if she were a battalion leader for the ancient Greeks. Good lord.

His latest prank was a success, judging by her thunderous expression.

“I just received a phone call from _my date,_ asking why in god’s name I would let him sit alone in a crowded restaurant for forty-five minutes!”

“You’d gotten over him by getting under someone else?” Lane tried in a weak way.

She grabbed a white sofa pillow by the corner and threw it at him. He dodged the missile easily. “Because _you_ told him I’d rescheduled dinner for tonight! And you stuffed the message in the drawer of an end table!”

“Doesn’t sound like me,” he demurred, but had to make a quick dash for the back stairs as she pursued him on foot. He saw a black satin pump hit the kitchen doorframe in front of him, and knew she was gaining on him.

“You do not get to interfere with my personal life!”

“You’ll never catch me, darling,” he couldn’t help taunting, as they faced off on opposite sides of the granite-topped island. He feigned moving to the left, and she fell for this, nearly slipping on the tile in her stocking feet. “I’m quick as a flash.”

“Said your last girlfriend,” she retorted, with a vicious little smirk.

“Wench,” he growled, and they were off again, this time toward the dining room. Another one of her black pumps sailed past his ear and into the wall, and he would have laughed at her terrible aim, if he’d not been so busy trying to avoid being tackled.

He felt her hand graze his collar as they reached the swinging door, and just as he ran through it, and she followed, there came a loud voice to their right.

“What are you doing?”

Oh, good god. He didn’t realise anyone else was home.

Lane turned to see Miss Sally and Miss Olson staring at them with identical expressions of shock, sitting at the far end of the polished dining room table, a large pile of the child’s homework left forgotten in front of them on the mahogany.

Mrs. Harris, although caught off guard, had returned to her usual manners, smoothing her hair back and folding her hands in front of her. She was slightly out of breath. “Sorry to interrupt, girls. _Lane_ forgot to give me one of my messages.”

“No, I didn’t,” he huffed, feeling silly to have this argument in front of people. God, he was winded. Ought to exercise more. “You’ve got it in—one hand.”

“Why,” said Sally, drawing out the word like this was very strange, “did you chase him?”

Miss Olson’s eyes were dancing with mirth. Lane could tell she was going to ask him far too many questions about this at a later time. “I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation.”

Thankfully for all parties involved, Mrs. Harris did not stay to invent one. “Excuse me. I need to make a phone call.”

Even in her stocking feet, she still maintained her dignity. It was infuriating. Lane, on the other hand, was forced to give them some kind of story.

“I’ve—erm—there’s a roast in the oven. Best go and—check on it.”

That night, Miss Olson ambushed him as he was watching the movie of the week on one of the lower cable channels. Mr. Draper and the children had already gone to bed.

“I know what I saw, and _that_ was flirting.”

“I—it—certainly was not!” he sputtered, pulling his thick housecoat tighter around his middle. “She is—despicable. I would never—it’s simply—”

He discovered that when pressed, he couldn’t put the reason into words. Not words that wouldn’t confirm Miss Olson’s airheaded theory, anyway. It had started with a chance remark, the year Mrs. Harris had first come on board as a partner (god: had it really been five years of working in the same house?), and their rivalry had continued on so long now it was practically tradition. He had to taunt her else she would take herself too seriously.

“Please. I’ve seen Gene chase girls around the playground with more subtlety.”

“I would _never_ flirt with her,” he found himself protesting in a loud voice, getting to his feet as he spoke, “because I don’t like that woman, and I never shall, and I am _above those things_ , thank you very much!”

“Wow,” Miss Olson said into the silence as he walked away, but she didn’t sound impressed. He didn’t allow himself to dwell on it as he stormed upstairs toward his bedroom.

Lane also avoided speaking to Mrs. Harris for the rest of the week, even after she made an unfortunate comment to Mr. Draper on Wednesday about a client _needing her desperately_. He had to bite his lip to keep from blurting out the retort at the front of his mind, and in the silence she looked at him in surprise, as if disappointed by his lack of response.

 4.

Over the years, Lane had developed a rather rude habit of entering rooms without knocking, but he indulged in that habit only when Mrs. Harris happened to be in the house. He’d once caught her by surprise as she was opening a bottle of water; watching her shriek aloud, coupled with the way she’d so gracelessly slung the plastic container and its contents across the office, had been Lane’s Christmas present to himself that year. She’d been furious with him for weeks.

One night in November, he found the perfect opportunity to repeat the experience. Mr. Draper was at some school function with the children, for once; Miss Olson had a date with a friend, and Mrs. Harris was working late in Mr. Draper’s office, no doubt hoping the man would suddenly come to his senses and return to her colorful clutches. Lane finished his usual chores in blissful silence and grabbed the nearest feather duster from the cupboard under pretense of a little late night cleaning. He marched down the hall and flung open the office door, intending to make some comment about the witching hour missing its supreme leader.

As he sailed inside, he found Mrs. Harris standing in the middle of the room with her dress unzipped to the waist. From the chest up, she was clad only in a crimson slip, whose soft lace cups barely covered her ample breasts. Even in the dim light of the desk lamp, the delicate garment hid nothing from his eyes.

Lane’s mouth hung open, and his face was flushed; he couldn’t remember how to form a single word, let alone the clever insult he’d been planning. He couldn’t stop staring. Joan’s breasts were so full and round and the red lace was bold against her creamy skin.

“Oops,” she said into the silence: a clear challenge. She moved one hand from where it rested against the middle of her zipper. The fabric of her dress slid past her generous hips, and pooled on the floor around her ankles.

“I—” he rasped, feeling as if his brain had short-circuited. “You’re—”

She was actually smiling, the witch. “Take a picture. It’ll last longer.”

The retort spurred him into action. Lane snapped his mouth shut, and marched out of the room as fast as his legs could take him. Standing in the hallway, he refused to think about the way her hands had smoothed over the skirt of her slip—how the movement had drawn attention to her powerful legs. He refused to see how the edge of satin fabric had played across her upper thighs, or to imagine how that scrap of fabric might feel pressed between their bodies as they—

No, she’s horrid, and he can’t stand her, and he’ll bloody whisper that into her ear as his hands skate up the backs of her thighs—

The front door slammed open, and the house was filled with a cacophony of noise: Mr. Draper grumbling and one child crying and the other two talking over each other.

“UGH! Gene, you got puke on the sleeve of my coat!” Sally shouted first, and it turned out that image was just the ticket to derail his sudden—and completely unwanted—train of thought. He steeled himself for the onslaught of unpleasant activity that was sure to follow.

 5.

After what Lane had privately termed The Incident, Mrs. Harris began to tease him in new, crueler ways. He kept catching fleeting glimpses of colorful lace every time she sat down on the sofa in those tight-fitting skirt suits. And she was always ready to catch him looking, the minx. When Mr. Draper was absorbed with paperwork, and Lane stopped in to refill the man’s coffee, she pretended to fuss with the hem of her dress or her collar only to draw attention to her considerable assets. It was making him completely bloody useless.

And she always laughed.

“I know what you’re doing,” he hissed to her one evening after weeks of torture, when they were alone in the study. She was preparing to go to some Christmas benefit with Mr. Draper, wearing a large winter white overcoat that swaddled her from neck to ankles. He could only imagine the kind of florid, eye-catching getup she was wearing underneath. “You are— _trying_ _to fluster me,_ and it is _very_ juvenile, and it won’t work anyway!”

“Me? Fluster _you?_ ” was all she said in reply, one eyebrow arching in sardonic amusement. As she loosened the buttons of her heavy coat, he prepared himself for a faceful of woolen fabric in response, but she simply shrugged the garment from her shoulders, and tossed it onto the arm of the leather sofa with one hand.

The neckline of her blue silk evening dress plunged so low it bordered on the obscene. Her fingers toyed with the chain of the long necklace dangling from her throat.

Lane sucked in a sharp breath.

Mrs. Harris watched his interested reaction with sharp eyes. “I thought you were above those things?”

He pulled her to him and crushed his mouth over hers in a passionate kiss. When they came up for air, after several minutes, they were both winded. One of his hands had drifted under the silk fabric of her dress to palm one breast, and she was gripping both his shoulders like they were the only reason she was still upright.

“Temptress,” he huffed first, hearing nothing but the low _whoosh_ of blood as it rushed through his ears in search of more…southern…locales.

She let out a breathy scoff. “That wouldn’t turn on a traffic light.”

Obviously he had no choice but to kiss her again, with more vigor this time, and she gave a gasp against his lips.

The loud, plaintive voice of Master Robert was suddenly heard in a nearby hallway.

“Lane? I can’t find my baseball cards anywhere!”

Lane pulled away from an embrace that was making him increasingly weak-kneed, and cursed his entire existence.

“Well, look a bit harder, for god’s sake!” he called back through the closed door, but the moment was already gone, and Mrs. Harris was stepping out of his arms, smirking, although red lipstick was smeared across half her face.

“If you’ll excuse me, I’m otherwise engaged,” she said, adjusting her dress and picking up her coat from the sofa in one fluid motion. God, she wasn’t going to leave this room looking like that? Christ, the cheek of her.

“As is your date,” he said in a gruff voice, though it wasn’t one of his better insults.

 

6.

“You’re not really writing your thesis on Wuthering Heights.”

Mr. Draper was shaking his head at Miss Olson across the breakfast table, as if he pitied any soul who’d have to bother reading about Catherine Earnshaw more than once. And yes—Lane _did_ understand that reference, thanks very much. He may not have gone to the finest school in the bloody world, but he was well versed in the classics, at any rate.

Not, he thought as he placed a spoonful of scrambled eggs onto a china plate, and brought it to young Master Gene, that he ever had much of a chance to discuss this.

“No, I’m not,” Peggy said dryly, slanting an amused look at the children, as if they were all sharing a joke. “I’m not even a student. I’m just a drifter.”

Don laughed. “Seem to have the hobo code for food figured out.”

Miss Olson hit him in the arm with the folded bit of her clean napkin. He pretended not to feel it. The children giggled.

“What’s so funny?”

Lane felt his stomach jump at the sound of Mrs. Harris’s voice as she entered the room, but he ignored this, and busied himself with refilling Miss Sally’s orange juice.

“ _Wuthering Heights,_ ” explained Peggy. “My dissertation.”

“Ugh,” pronounced the red-haired woman, with a little eyeroll that was almost funny. “Peggy, if I wanted to spend breakfast discussing Victorian sadism—”

“You’d open your Rolodex?” Lane interrupted. He replaced the pitcher of juice on the credenza, and then moved to pick up the silver coffee pot.

Joan’s eyes narrowed, but she didn’t seem upset by his remark, only amused. Her painted nails tapped against the edge of the dining table.

“ _Je m’en fous_ , Old English,” she said sweetly, and Lane nearly spilled coffee all over the table in response. His grasp of French was rudimentary at best, but he had learned _that_ phrase—and not in class.

“Joan,” said Mr. Draper with a loud sigh, seeming only to catch the tone of her reply and not the content, “you know I hate it when you do that.”

“Speak French?” Joan returned, her voice airy. “Or put Lane in his place?”

Lane sniffed in an offended way.

“Both,” was Mr. Draper’s aggrieved answer.

 7.

As a rule, there remained one area of Mrs. Harris’ personal affairs that was off-limits to Lane’s brand of mischief: her food. He did not play games with any of her meals, having learned that lesson the hard way during her second week on the job. So while fulfilling his duties to her in this regard gave him no pleasure beyond inventing a few new recipes, it was infinitely preferable to having a full plate tossed at his head in a way that suggested the woman had missed her true calling as a discus athlete.

One morning, Mr. Draper was wooing clients at the Athletic Club while Mrs. Harris was waiting on a phone call from a new investor in California. Lane was polite enough to let the phone ring without picking up and declaring she’d just moved to Timbuktu, but when he went into the office to needle her about an unrelated matter, he found her sitting motionless on the sofa with red eyes and a trembling mouth, the cordless extension clenched in a hand that was lying motionless against the cushions.

“Oh,” he said, startled. God, he couldn’t make fun of her if she was crying.

“Make your little jokes, Lane,” she sighed, swiping at her damp cheeks with her other hand. She didn’t even look up at him. “I don’t care.”

“Was that—California?” he asked, voice quiet.

“No,” she replied.

The silence stretched between them until she spoke again.

“My friend died.”

He knows that on any other day, she’d attempt to follow that kind of statement with a cutting remark, to downplay its seriousness. _I’m sure you understand—you’re a million years old. Don’t worry, I’ll speak slowly:_ some _of us have_ friends.

He didn’t know what to tell her except _I’m sorry,_ and those two words felt so painfully inadequate, given the circumstances. They weren’t really cordial; it wasn’t as if he could inquire about the passing, or what this person did for a living, or how the two of them struck up an acquaintance. He suspected the list of people she considered true friends was very small. She was a very private person. Not that this was a terrible thing.

“Will you get me some tea?” she said, clearing her throat, and he nodded in assent.

“Course.”

For once in his life, a few useless bits of information lodged in his brain happened to come in handy. He knew that Joan preferred extra milk and sugar in her earl grey when she was upset, and also knew that despite her insistence on a balanced diet, she had an unflinching weakness for chocolate pastries.

As it happened, there were éclairs cooling on the rack, which he was going to serve the family as part of tonight’s dessert. He decided to pretend the batch came out wrong instead. The children didn’t need to eat that much sugar, anyway.

When he returned to the office with a milky cup of tea and a plate with two éclairs, all balanced on a small tray, Mrs. Harris stared at him like he’d lost his mind.

He affected carelessness with a little shrug of one shoulder, setting the tray onto the nearest end table. “Even the Germans and the Allies had an armistice at Christmas.”

“It’s February,” she said in a flat voice, as if he were a prize idiot. But he noticed the lift of her mouth as she reached out for the first pastry, and took this as a sign of gratitude.

 8.

The family was on Easter holiday in California—along with Miss Olson, who had time off from school and wanted to, as she put it, “dodge my mother’s Catholic guilt.” While Mr. Draper had made some crack about him being able to catch up on chores as they left, Lane was actually taking advantage of the solitude, thank you _very_ much.

He was folding laundry while standing in the living room, dressed only in a collared shirt, novelty underwear, and his dress socks, with the radio blaring guitar riffs. In fact, he was in the middle of a particularly satisfying Jagger impersonation when he turned to see Joan standing behind him, wearing a lightweight coat and sunglasses, with her hair obscured by a patterned silk scarf. There was a delighted grin on her face.

“Rock and roll, darling,” he said, punctuating this impulsive remark with another ridiculous hip thrust. He didn’t know why he was encouraging this. He ought to have knocked her unconscious with the nearest table lamp.

She removed her scarf and sunglasses, and set them onto the sofa, eyeing him with a skeptical expression. Her eyes flicked up and down his body.

“That’s supposed to be a turn-on?”

Twenty minutes later she was pinned beneath him on the floor, panting, wearing only her bra and a single stocking. One of his hands moved hot and quick between her legs.

“You’re beautiful this way,” he blurted on accident, and she opened and closed her mouth like she wanted to tell him to shut up, but couldn’t find the words. So he kept saying it, voice getting rougher each time. _Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful._

“Don’t talk,” she finally gasped, on the edge of a noise that told him she was close.

“Holding you back?” he teased, nuzzling his lips over her neck as he touched her. She shivered again.

 “I’ll—” she tried to speak, “I’m—”

She could hardly suck in a breath, and he relished that he was able to reduce such a woman to such a quivering mess. God, it was incredible.

“Come for me, then,” he whispered in her ear, as if it were nothing, and seconds later he felt her entire body stiffen and spasm in his embrace.

 

9.

“Why do you let her bother you so much, hm?”

They were lying in bed together in the middle of the night; his room was lit only by a small lamp on a table at the far side of the bed. Joan was naked and sitting against two pillows, while he was turned on his left side, propped up by an elbow, and was tracing patterns on her bare thigh in a kind of absentminded way.

“ _Peggy_ does not bother me,” said Joan, with a little huff of breath. He knew that huff for what it was—a delay tactic.

“Well, you like arguing with her.”

Lane was whispering, for some reason, although everyone in the house was long asleep by now. It was probably one or two o’clock. He couldn’t see the time from this side of the bed.

Joan sighed again, in a more amused way this time. He prepared himself for another round of verbal sparring, and so he was surprised when she spoke again, and it wasn’t to toss off another insult.

“I don’t understand that girl.”

Lane tried to keep his reply mild. “You mean, why she’s here?”

She wrinkled her nose. Meaning no. “Don gives her too much leeway.”

“The children like her,” he offered after a few seconds. He didn’t have to state the obvious. It was easy to see Don was besotted. He always got that way about women as a rule, but never for someone like Miss Olson, and never for so long. It was as if he’d become shy about pursuing her, which was, frankly, hilarious.

“So what. They’re practically wild,” Joan scoffed, and he couldn’t help but laugh.

“You don’t think the two of them are well suited?”

Lane had watched Peggy and Don tiptoe around each other for ages. There’s a connection there he doesn’t understand—something stronger and deeper than either of the idiots will let on aloud—but it’s noticeable, and it’s constant. They’re always talking, writing taglines and lessons on scraps of paper and various notepads, bickering about word placement or creative license or some poem they’ve both read. Don’s mouth thins when Peggy brings round another one of her strange boyfriends, and Peggy gets her hackles up when a beautiful woman even passes by the man in a crowded room. She’s not maternal in a traditional sense, but she does care about the children, very much, and they really do love her. And as for their father, when he sees Peggy in a nice dress and a bit of bright lipstick—well, Lane’s just surprised Don hasn’t started sneaking away with her after supper, like a couple of desperate teenagers.

Joan seemed less enthusiastic. “She’s barely thirty. And he’s—”

“What?” Lane asked.

Her lips pursed, as if she were fighting the impulse to laugh. “Well, it wouldn’t be the first time a Bay Ridge girl married up.”

“That’s not why she’d do it,” Lane said with a sigh. “She—has genuine feeling.”

Joan was less sentimental. “You can deny it all you like, but his money does matter. I’ll bet she knows a good thing when she sees it.”

He didn’t know why this comment irked him so much. “Are you saying that’s all she’s after?”

“Jesus.” She sounded surprised. “Are you really upset?”

“I’m—just—you don’t know everything, Joan,” he retorted, turning onto his other side. He could still hear her voice in his head. _The money does matter._

“Suit yourself,” Joan said simply, in the cool tone of voice that told him he was being an idiot. “I’m just being realistic.”

The blankets shifted to the left as she reached to turn out the small light.

 

10. 

Thursday morning, Lane was positive he was coming down with something, despite the summer weather being more stifling than ever. His head was all foggy and he felt achy, like he was on the brink of flu.

It was inevitable, really. The children had been exhausting. Miss Olson couldn’t keep them out of his hair unless she took them out of the house, and she’d been so busy with school that day trips had become next to impossible. Even worse, he and Joan had been very snappish with each other—not that anyone had really noticed.

He was in the kitchen polishing some silverware, and grumbling aloud about the headache that was threatening to turn into a full migraine, when Joan entered the room with a breezy _hello_. The cordless phone was gripped in her hand.

“You’ve looked better,” she said upon seeing him, a furrow forming between her perfect brows. As she pulled open the refrigerator door to get a bottle of water, he wiped a few drops of sweat from his brow with the back of his hand.

 _Better than you,_ he meant to retort, but the words wouldn’t leave his mouth. A sudden pain had seared to life in his chest. It was so sharp he couldn’t breathe—he felt dizzy—

“Are you all right?”

He couldn’t speak.  He could hardly stand—all he could do was reach for her.

**

Peggy and Don could hear the commotion all the way down the hospital hallway: a familiar voice shouting in angry, high-pitched tones.

“Ma’am,” a nurse was pleading over this, “please—I don’t mean to upset you, but—”

They rounded the corner just in time to see Joan pick up a desk toy from the high counter and hurl it into the floor behind the nurse’s station. “I don’t _care_ what you meant!”

Don was at her side immediately, pulling Joan away from the horrified nurse and into the nearest corner, away from most of the prying eyes. Peggy could see the woman visibly try to put herself back together. Her posture straightened, and she set her jaw before she spoke. The words were clipped.

“I can’t stay out here.”

“Have they told you anything?” Peggy asked, putting a hand on Joan’s arm in an attempt to be reassuring. “What happened?”

For a horrible moment, Peggy was sure the other woman was going to cry. But Joan just blinked back the water in her eyes, and spoke again, her voice strained.

“I promised he wouldn’t be alone.”

“I—maybe—they’ll let Don go in,” was all Peggy could say, glaring at a shocked-looking Don, who could feel free to jump in any time now. Why was she the only person trying to calm Joan down? Jesus.

“He—we’ll all—”

“Mrs. Pryce,” interrupted a quiet voice. It was a hesitant young woman in blue scrubs, with dishwater blonde hair. She seemed like she’d just come on shift. “He’s asking for you.”

It took Peggy longer than she cared to admit to remember that Pryce was Lane’s last name—and the nurse thought Joan was his wife!

Joan didn’t even correct the mistake; she just stepped forward and began to follow this nurse down the hall.

As they watched her go, Don scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck, as if a few things he’d observed over the past year or two were finally clicking into place.

“So…” was all he said. His cheeks had turned pink.

Peggy snorted out a noise like a laugh, although the situation was far from funny.

“I don’t know much,” she said with a sigh. “Do you want details?”

**

Lane was lying under a thin cotton blanket. He was awake, and looked relieved to see her. There was a clear tube in his nose—oxygen, she guessed—along with an IV in one hand and a blood pressure cuff wrapped around his upper arm. He looked pale and tired.

Joan took a seat on the edge of his mattress, near his right hip, and reached for his free hand, almost afraid to disturb him.

“They wouldn’t let me in at first.”

She could still picture the way his face had drained of color. He’d slumped back against the counter, pure shock in his eyes, with one hand outstretched toward her. _Don’t go._ That was all he’d been able to say before he collapsed.

 _I won’t,_ she’d whispered, pushing down her panic as she dialed 911 _. I promise._

She thought he might die.

It took the gentle pressure of his fingers squeezing hers for Joan to realize there were tears spilling from the corners of her eyes. She hated herself for turning into a mess.

“I can’t lose you,” she managed to tell him. She couldn’t even look at him as she said it.

His thumb brushed back and forth against the side of her hand. His voice was raspy.

“Look at me.”

Joan glanced over. The expression on his face was so raw it made her ache.

“Thank god you’re here,” he said.

As a reflex, she reached out with her free hand to tuck a few messy locks of hair behind his damp temple.

Lane closed his eyes, leaning into the touch, and so she leaned in to give him a very brief kiss. For a few moments they were quiet, as she continued to stroke his hair. The only noises in the room were the random beeps and whirs of machines next to his bed.

“Your hand is freezing,” he eventually said, opening his eyes with a small sigh.

Joan almost laughed, torn between horrified amusement and relief. If he was making a joke, he must be feeling slightly more like himself. _“Really?”_

“Mm,” Lane said, noncommittal, but the ghost of a smile played across his lips.

“See if I’m nice to you again,” she scoffed, pretending to be upset, but she was almost smiling now, and Lane sighed a second time, shifting against the pillows.

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to say that this happened because of some cute AU prompt I found, but no--it was just inspired by watching one too many episodes of _The Nanny,_ which was one of my favorite shows in the 90s. I regret nothing!
> 
> Also: the French phrase _Je men fous_ loosely means "I don't give a shit/fuck," although it more literally translates to "I fuck myself, sometimes." LOL.


End file.
